


Truth

by go_from_there



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: 2x05, Canon Compliant, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 14:44:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23103454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/go_from_there/pseuds/go_from_there
Summary: Alex coming out to Maggie at the end of 2x05, from Maggie's POV
Relationships: Alex Danvers & Maggie Sawyer
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	Truth

Maggie was processing. She’d never seen anything like that. Miner grabbed his head, and then he was just… gone. Good guy or bad guy, he was in police custody, under her protection. And he died right in front of her without anyone laying a hand on him, his two friends meeting the same fate a moment later. She hadn’t done her job to the best of her ability. 

Which was how she found herself alone in a dark corner of the shadowy dive bar, three shots lined up in front of her, just to get started. Trying to make sense of her day. Or at least make it cloudy around the edges for a while. 

She hadn’t forgotten what happened the last time she talked to Alex a couple days ago, but it hadn’t been a high priority with alien weapons on the loose. She would talk to her again eventually, apologize for making an assumption - or more specifically for blurting it out the way she had - and hope that Alex wasn’t too upset to keep working together.    
  
Alex had walked away in quite a hurry considering she’d been so interested in getting Maggie to hang out with her just moments earlier. Maggie could tell Alex wasn’t the kind of jerk who thought that wondering if she was gay was some kind of insult. But in her experience, Maggie had never met a straight woman who was so upset by that suggestion that she had to leave the conversation entirely. The assumption Maggie made about Alex’s sexuality in that moment was one Alex probably hadn’t considered about herself before; it was a lot to process and the desire to run had won out in that fight-or-flight moment. 

But she was abruptly reminded of it all the moment she heard Alex’s voice approaching a few feet behind her. Checking in after having heard about the incident during prisoner transport.    
  
It felt good having Alex on her side, even if they hadn’t known each other all that long. They saw things in their jobs that most people couldn’t imagine, and Maggie hadn’t had a friend in a while who got that. Or a person she could honestly call a friend at all. She wondered distantly if she had messed that up by being so blunt with Alex the other day. 

Feeling uneasy as Alex inquired about her state of mind, Maggie brought it up first, apologizing for how abrupt she had been when they last spoke. She wasn’t sure exactly what she had been expecting, but Alex sitting down across from her hadn’t been high on the list.    
  
But as soon as Alex started talking about a ‘perfect’ life and dating being the thing she couldn’t get right, Maggie knew what this was. She’d been here before. She had heard this speech, saw this connection being made in someone’s mind, saw the weight being lifted from someone’s shoulders. It was always a little different, but also very much the same.    
  
It had been different for Maggie. She knew she was gay from the beginning. She hadn’t experienced for herself what it was like to internalize those feelings because of pressure from society to live life a certain way. It was hell having to learn so young how painful love could be, feeling the full force of hatred from small-minded people. Worse, seeing that hate in her own parents’ eyes as they threw her out of her own home for something she had no control over. In that respect, Maggie could relate to all the women she knew who figured out their sexuality after college. Bigotry had been in her face from the beginning. A force so strong that she sometimes wished there was a way she  _ could _ have a choice about her sexuality. For other women, it was that ugliness all around them - even if it wasn’t directed at them - that pushed their sense of self down deep, their subconscious protecting them from that pain.    
  
The world had gotten a little better though. Maggie realized that the trauma she endured served to protect others - living her life honestly made it possible for people to see that she wasn’t a bad person and that she wanted the same things in life as everyone else. The older she got, the more she felt a sense of community. And the more she met women like Alex who were missing something in their lives that they couldn’t quite narrow down. 

The first time a woman talked to Maggie like this - having an epiphany about their sexuality - she didn’t quite know what to do. There wasn’t a problem to solve or questions to answer. She was just the out lesbian who was there to hear about someone who was discovering herself. She was the person who would be supportive and accepting of all the things that were too scary to say aloud before. 

That was all people really needed: to speak their truth to someone they could trust wouldn’t judge them for it. It got easier each time - hearing about this huge change in someone’s life and identity - because all she had to do was listen. Listen while people finally understood a part of themselves well enough to name it and be happy about it. And share in that excitement, because she remembered what it was like when she was finally in college and met other queer people who were proud of who they were and who they loved. Having others to share her feelings and experiences with made this thing that was so shameful to her family a thing she could finally love about herself.    
  
Alex wasn’t quite to the joyful part yet. She was finding her truth, but it was all still a lot to take in. She was taking the steps that would lead her to finding happiness in this new understanding of herself. She had only had a few days to look back on her life and see how the dots hadn’t connected in the way she thought they were meant to. There was a peacefulness to it, though. That much was clear as Alex admitted that there must have been some truth to what Maggie said. Alex might not have figured out how to label this part of herself, or might not have been ready to say the words out loud, but she was clear in that she was embracing whatever it was.

Maggie had only spoken three words before Alex decided she was finished and left the table. She didn’t turn to watch Alex go, but she imagined she left with a lightness to her that she hadn’t walked in with. It was infectious; even as her own problems began coming back to her, she couldn’t help but notice the weight was a little easier to bear than it had been five minutes earlier, and that was something worth holding on to. 


End file.
